Task
You have to give a quick usability evaluation of an online movie rental site. The aim of your evaluation is to determine how easily a user can find and rent a given movie.
The persona that you are to use is that of a 40 year old professional, with reasonable experience in using Office type applications, who is generally time poor and wants to find an escapist movie to watch and relax.
You have two tasks to complete for this assignment:
You have to research and determine a set of usability heuristics that you can use to evaluate a user interface. Your heuristic can be based on an existing heuristic, such as Norman’s Usability heuristic, or Schneiderman’s golden rules. You are required to:
List the usability heuristic items that you would consider to be essential for this user evaluation;
Briefly describe why you have chosen each item and what you expect it to show you.
Conduct a usability evaluation for an online movie rental site (choose one of the following: http://bigpondmovies.com , http://www.quickflix.com.au, https://play.google.com/movies) and search for a movie with the word “Space” in the title. Go through the rental process as far as you can without proceeding to payment.
Rationale
This assignment covers the following objectives for this subject:
Be able to list and explain the importance of the principles of Design in HCI;
Be able to explain the importance of Usability in interface design;
Be able to list and apply the major Usability guidelines to an interface design;
Be able to create a design for an interface using the Principles of Design.

Marking criteria
Question
HD D
CR P F
Research and determine a set of heuristic usability items
Comprehensive heuristic that includes the major usability principles and is entirely suitable for this evaluation Thorough heuristic that includes the major usability principles and is mainly suitable for this evaluation Detailed heuristic that includes most of the major usability principles Adequate heuristic that includes many of the major usability principles Incomplete or irrelevant heuristic that does not include many of the major usability principles
Justify the selection of the heuristics Comprehensive justification of the items chosen which includes a detailed explanation of each items use in an evaluation Thorough justification of the items chosen which includes an explanation of each items use in an evaluation Good justification of the items chosen along with some explanation of each items use in an evaluation Adequate justification of the items chosen with some explanation of each items use in an evaluation Incomplete or irrelevant justification of the items chosen
Use the usability heuristic to evaluate an online movie site Comprehensive heuristic based assessment that covers all aspects of the UX involved in the task. Thorough heuristic based assessment that covers most aspects of the UX involved in the task. Detailed heuristic based assessment that covers many aspects of the UX involved in the task. Adequate heuristic based assessment that covers the UX involved in the task Incomplete or irrelevant assessment that ignores or does not comment on much of the UX involved in the task
Presentation, spelling and grammar (-5 marks) Up to 5 marks may be deducted for poor presentation, spelling and grammar
Task
Marks
Create Heuristic list 15
Justify heuristic choices 25
Apply heuristics in evaluation 15
Site assessment 25
Justification 20
Total 100
Presentation, spelling, grammar (up to -5 marks) -5
Presentation
You are to present a report that has the following sections:
Usability Heuristic. This should be a dot point list of each heuristic item that you are using for the evaluation.
Justification. This should be a brief explanation of why you chose each item and what you expect to each item to show you.
Evaluation. This should be your evaluation of the site and your experience in searching for and attempting to rent a movie. It should refer to the findings that you discovered from your use of the heuristic and should give an overall evaluation of the site from the perspective of the user.